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I’m still about as reliable as rain when it comes to posting on this thing. But also like the rain, I do eventually return!

That business I was talking about, it never got off the ground. I thought I had done my homework, but I hadn’t, and the costs just kept piling on until I realized that at this point in my life, it just wasn’t feasible for me.

Like this:

I wanted to start by saying thank you. Thank you for trying to protect me all these years. Thank you for building those walls when I wasn’t strong enough to face the world. Thank you for studying people and watching them so closely, and alerting me every time they did something suspicious that was similar to other times I’d been hurt. Thank you for tucking me deep down, away from all the pain and the hurt that the world can bring. Thank you for everything.

But it’s time for me to come out now. It’s time for me to face the world and feel the sun on my face. I can’t stay locked inside anymore. It’s time for me to stop hiding and start healing. I can’t stay protected forever. The walls we built have turned into a prison. I need to be free, to get a few bumps and bruises, because that’s the only way I will grow. I’m not saying I don’t need you anymore, because I do. This is all very new to me, and I’ll need a safe place I can come to when I start getting overwhelmed.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate the things you’ve done for me, but the things that once helped me are now hurting me. It’s time for us to come up with a new way of dealing with the outside. I’m willing to work with you on this, because you have been faithful and strong for me, but you must find it within you to start breaking down some of these walls.

You have been the truest friend I’ve ever had, but it’s time for us to let go of all of the old hurts and realize that hiding away isn’t going to stop the hurt from happening. Life is going to hurt, but the walls mean there’s no one else around to make it better again. We are no longer children, and we know that hiding our head beneath the covers only protects us from the monsters that live in the closet, not from the monsters that live in broad daylight.

We can be strong without being distant. We can love without fear. Living life waiting for the other shoe to drop hasn’t made us happy, so it’s time for a change.

I openly share my ignorance when I admit that up until very recently, I thought ‘Namaste’ was simply the Indian way to say ‘Hello’. I was raised in a Christian household, and have had little to no exposure to other religions or cultures outside of what I’ve seen on television or perhaps clicked past on-line, and didn’t put forth much effort into remedying my ignorance. To be completely open about it, I still don’t do much to proactively investigate other religions or cultures past their relation to something I’m thinking about or researching, but I do learn little tidbits here and there.

I recently learned that ‘Namaste’ and the pressed hand gesture/slight bow combination in Hinduism literally means ‘I bow to the divine in you’. This wouldn’t have meant much to me a few weeks ago, but I’ve been watching a series of interviews on YouTube recently featuring Sister Shivani where she speaks often about the importance of remembering that everyone is a soul, and began pure and good. I know not everyone even believes in the existence of a ‘soul’, but regardless of your beliefs, you can’t deny that we are all human, we were born innocent and pure, and are the way we are as a result of the things we have been taught or experienced in the time since we were born.

I could be totally off the mark since Hinduism isn’t my forte, but I imagine that the practice was created as a reminder to the person giving the greeting that everyone else carries a spark of the divine within them, and to treat them accordingly. Even if I’m way off the mark, I think it’s a good concept. Continue reading →

If you’ve followed me for a while, or paged through my posts, you may or may not have noticed the fact that I almost never reblog posts from other people’s pages (I believe I may have reblogged one post out of nearly 100). Part of this is because I strongly feel that my blog should consist of my own work, not just be a showcase for other people’s writing. Another reason is that if a post has enough of an impact on me that I consider reblogging it, then I usually have plenty of commentary about it. My preferred method of sharing the work of others that provokes a response from me is by writing about it, and linking to it. I ran across one such post today on a blog I greatly enjoy reading, Cauldrons and Cupcakes, entitled Lessons on Waiting and Being Delayed.

Often, we get so caught up in our daily lives and to-do lists that we forget that other people are more than just obstacles we must navigate around. We have become numb to the pain and suffering of our fellow man, and our ability to empathize has atrophied to the point that it is only engaged by those who occupy our immediate circle of friends and family, and those rare moments when we’re unable to turn our heads from the abject suffering on our television screens. Continue reading →

Today I ran across this ‘meme’, and it applies to some things I’ve been contemplating lately. I saved it and was about to post it to my Facebook page, when I had to pause and rethink its message. Are expectations really the root of all heartache? After a few moments of serious thought, I had to conclude that although the sentiment seems sound on the surface, it is incorrect. I don’t believe that expectations are the problem.

I believe it is important for us to hold expectations; of ourselves as well as those around us. It’s been proven that higher expectations net higher results than low or no expectations. When expectations come as a representation of faith in the potential of people or situations, I believe they are an entirely positive thing. The problems begin to arise when we allow ourselves to forget that the expectations we hold are nothing more than fantasies we have woven about the future, in order to predict what will make us happy. Continue reading →